


I Need a Hero

by theroyalsavage



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Also Nico's got a dirty mouth, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, And Will's a hopeless dork, First Meetings, M/M, Some references to violence but nothing at all graphic, What else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-01 22:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4036288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroyalsavage/pseuds/theroyalsavage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The "Nico is a superhero, Will is a med student" AU nobody asked for or wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Need a Hero

The first time they meet is a coincidence, too random to be fate, too logical to be an accident. It is October, winding sidewalks wet with rain and coated with damp leaves the color of a sunset, and Will is running. His head is down, a beanie pulled down over his ears to try and protect his hair from the humidity, his jacket soaked through on the shoulders.

He’s late to his shift at the pizza place where he works nights. (His days are spent in classes, where his professors try and jam strange, convoluted words that mean ‘finger’ and ‘blood cell’ and ‘death’ into his brain.)

He watches his feet instead of the path ahead of him, takes turns automatically, dodges the occasional stranger by instinct. But the town where he lives is quiet, unwelcoming during storms, and so he moves through deserted walkways largely uncontested, blinking raindrops out of his eyes.

He barely notices that the sidewalk has peeled away and become a street. He doesn’t notice the bus barreling towards him until the roar of the engine is all he can hear, the headlights burning into his eyes like supernovas.

 _I’m going to die_ , is all he has time to think before he’s yanked out of the way, back onto the sidewalk, into the circle of somebody’s arms.

Will processes slowly, thoughts beginning to cut their way through the miasma of shock and adrenaline. He’s alive. He’s breathing. The bus is screaming down the road, away from him.

He’s alive.

For a moment that seems to stretch into an eternity, Will just stands there, still clutching his savior’s coat. His forehead rests on the other’s shoulder, his breathing ragged and painful, as he tries to stop his hands from shaking.

And then the person pushes him away, gently but insistently, and Will looks him in the face for the first time.

He’s probably beautiful, Will thinks, but it’s the kind of beauty you have to think about, the kind of beauty you need to work for. His face is built of fragile lines - swooping, delicate curves that trace around eyes the color of midnight and long, elegant eyelashes and lips that seem to turn downwards by instinct. His hair is just slightly too long, his black hoodie overlarge and worn to almost gray.

He looks like the kind of person who looks better in the moonlight, Will thinks, and then he wonders what made him think it.

“You must be out of your damn mind,” his savior comments, remarkably calmly, considering he just pulled somebody out of the path of a moving bus.

He must’ve appeared out of thin air, Will thinks…. or maybe Will really _is_ just completely oblivious. The thing is, he could’ve sworn up and down that there was nobody on the street, that it was just him and his lateness and the rain, and yet…

And yet.

( _He’s alive_.)

Will’s heart is pounding, slamming, in his chest. Hard enough to hurt. “I think,” he says, “you saved my life.”

The guy looks unimpressed. He crosses his arms over his chest and continues to scowl up at Will. “No shit, dumbass. You ran out in front of a _bus_.”

Will shrugs a little helplessly. He’s really, really late for work now, and his breathing is too heavy, and he sort of feels like he might throw up.

“I… maybe wasn’t quite watching where I was going.”

“Obviously,” the guy snorts. His eyes stay steady on Will’s, a deep, almost unnatural-looking black. He’s got an accent, Will thinks, barely-there and slightly musical. It’s nice. Pretty. Matches his face well.

Will is struck by the sudden, violent need to hear him speak again. And, for a second, he looks like he’s going to say something else. But then he shakes his head and turns to go, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt.

“I’ve never seen you around here,” Will calls after him. “Do you live in the area?”

“Don’t feel bad,” the guy says, without turning around. “People don’t see me very often.”

This strikes Will as one of the universe’s greatest tragedies. Instead of saying so, he shouts, “Seriously, thank you. I owe you one.”

The guy shrugs, keeps moving forward. “Just be more careful next time.”

Will nods and says, “Of course,” but the rain swallows his voice, and his savior disappears.

 

When they meet for the second time, spring is blossoming on the bare branches of the trees along the sidewalks. The world is changing along with the seasons, Will can feel it; the wind itself tastes new, different, off. There are whispers on the streets of a new kind of army, of people who aren’t people, of incredible sources of untapped power.

Will is a man of science, and these rumors interest him for two reasons. The first is simple curiosity; he’s been studying biology for years, and he can’t begin to figure out the genetic coding that allows a man to be more than a man. The second reason is a little more complicated, and a lot more selfish.

(He still dreams about the incident with the bus, sometimes, about the feeling of that boy’s hands on his shoulders, about his delicately downturned mouth and the melodic lilt of his voice.)

Streetlights are winking on in the near-dusk as Will leaves the library that night, his backpack slung over his shoulders, full of notes and finals prep packets. He’s wearing his track team’s jacket and his university’s sweatpants, half exhausted and half flip-a-table-punch-a-wall frustrated.

The light fades as he walks, the sky bleeding from lavender to navy to indigo. The first star of the night winks at him - or maybe that’s an airplane. Will can never really tell.

He rounds a corner and finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun.

It isn’t quite what the movies make it out to be; there’s no screaming, no pleading for his life, no shaking of fists or “You’ll never get away with this!” There’s only this:

“You got a wallet?”

“Yes.”

“Take it out and put it on the ground. Real slow. No funny moves… I said take it _out_ , buddy!”

Will is afraid, but it is a different kind of afraid than when he almost got hit by a bus. That fear was hot, sharp, copper-scented. That fear was sudden and shocking, like rounds of ammunition emptied into his chest.

This fear, interestingly, is the opposite: quiet, cloying, seductive. It’s the kind of fear that sinks claws in and tears apart, slowly, almost gently.

The mugger is wearing a black mask, but Will can still see his eyes. There’s something desperate in them, a different kind of fear than Will’s altogether, making his pupils dilate and his muscles clench and his mouth spit, “You give me your wallet or I put a bullet in your eye.”

This time, when his savior appears, Will is watching.

He is assembled out of the shadows, piece by deliberate piece, like black smoke misting and curling and coming together. It is miraculous, and it is terrifying; one second the street is empty, and the next, he is there, striding forward, slapping the gun out of the mugger’s hands and punching him in the jaw.

The mugger goes down, hard. He tries to get up, but Will’s savior puts a foot square in the center of his back and steps down. He collapses onto the pavement.

“Grab that for me, would you?” Will’s savior says, nodding towards the gun on the street. It takes Will a second to understand he’s talking to him.

“Oh. _Oh_! Yes, um, sorry, hang on-”

It is metal and plastic and feels ugly in Will’s hand.

When the dark-haired boy has the weapon, he holds it up in front of the mugger’s face. For a second, Will is certain - Will is terrified - that he’s going to shoot the guy (this boy seems jagged, somehow, dangerous, in the same way you can tell a kitchen knife is dangerous, or a piece of broken glass).

That is not what happens.

Shadows travel up the boy’s arm, wriggling and arching and racing each other from his bicep to his fingertips and onto the weapon. It lifts into the air, and Will watches wordlessly as the boy closes his fingers leisurely and the weapon is crushed, midair.

It drops to the ground with a hollow clattering sound, formless and ruined. The boy takes his foot off the mugger’s back and the mugger sprints away, and then it is the two of them, staring at each other.

“I know you,” the boy says. His voice still sounds like a symphony.

Will nods wordlessly.

His savior is wearing a black t-shirt advertising for a band Will’s never heard of. His hair is pulled back into a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck, the front falling out around his face. As Will watches, the shadows slide back up his skin and into place on his arms - thick, curving, black tattoos that somehow seem kinetic, living, even when they’re completely still.

“Are you okay?” he asks, almost reluctantly, his eyes searching Will’s face.

“I’m fine. Are you fine? I’m fine. Great, actually. Um. I. What, exactly…? That is, um. What exactly are you?”

For a second, Will’s worried the boy will be insulted. But he just looks amused, and a little tired.

“Different,” he offers.

There is a thick, heavy silence. Then Will says, “I won’t tell anyone.”

For a second he seems annoyed, but then his expression softens, and the corner of his mouth twitches up. “Thanks.”

He’s starting to look smudgy, darker. It takes Will a second to understand that he’s fading, much more slowly than he appeared in the first place.

“Wait!” Will begs, reaching for his arm. “Wait, hang on a sec - I want to ask about your DNA!”

He’s gone before Will has the chance to say anything else.

“Smooth, Solace,” he whispers to the empty alleyway.

 

After that, Will stays alert.

There are headlines, more and more frequently nowadays: stories of people with unusual strength, who can hit you between the eyes with an arrow from across a crowded street, who can control lightning and water and even the mind itself. They save cities, the country, the world, and it is impossible, and it is somehow also real.

Will is watching the news as a kid with hair the color of pitch and eyes the color of the ocean saves Manhattan from an army of giants.

(There is never anything about a boy built from shadows, though.)

The third time they meet is not an accident. Will’s mind is full of delicate features and tattoos made from darkness, of wry smiles and almost-accents. He starts seeking out trouble.

He is out with Lou Ellen and Cecil on the night in question, a little drunk, a lot stupid. When the man at the bar slips something into his date’s drink, Will sees. When he leads her outside by the hand, when she sways a little on her feet, Will sees that, too.

He follows them, muttering something to his friends about needing to use the restroom. Out in the parking lot, the bastard is forcing the woman into the passenger’s seat of his fancy, gleaming Mercedes Benz. Will waits until he comes around to the driver’s side to tap him on the shoulder.

“What?” the bastard snarls.

Will punches him in the nose.

It hurts a lot more than he expected it to, though he suspects the alcohol in his system is actually _helping_ with that, a bit. The man fights back, fierce, all scraping nails and bared teeth and furious snarls. Will takes a punch to the eye, and then the stomach.

And then his opponent pulls out a knife.

Will stumbles backwards. The rational bits of his brain are screaming at him to run, that he’s in over his head, that he’s gone too far this time.

(The irrational parts are whispering about a boy made of darkness, and how there’s no way in hell _he_ would run.)

And then, like a promise, the shadows around him begin to froth, roil, expand. They creep up the bastard’s legs as he moves towards Will, pull him down, onto the pavement. They creep across his torso, up over his shoulders, around his head and neck and then he is gone, and all that is left of him is a shiny car and a drugged girlfriend.

Behind Will, a voice says, “You’re either really brave or really stupid.”

“I think it might be a little of both,” Will admits, turning to face his savior.

He’s wearing a jumpsuit, all black, a mask over his face and an unfamiliar emblem - an odd-looking cross, cradling an ‘o’ - emblazoned in deep blue across the chest.

And right now, he looks pissed.

“That guy could’ve killed you.”

“But he didn’t.”

“But he could’ve. What the fuck were you _thinking_? Why do you always do such risky shit?”

Will shrugs helplessly. “She needed help. I helped her. Isn’t that what you people do?”

The boy goes very, very still.

“What do you mean?”

“I figured you were one of them,” Will whispers. He’s probably staring. He can’t seem to stop. “Those… demigods? Heroes? The ones who saved New York.”

He says, “Oh.”

Will says, “Are you?”

He looks a little frustrated, reaches up to scrub a hand through his hair. “I guess I am, yeah.”

“Were you there? New York?”

The black-haired boy nods. He doesn’t look particularly proud.

“You keep saving me, too.”

His mouth twitches up into a tiny smile (it’s minuscule and mocking and breathtaking, like the sun breaking through clouds, like dawn after the world’s longest night) and he nods again. “Part of the job description. We’re supposed to save civilians. You’re the only one I’ve met more than once, though. It’s almost impressive.”

Will laughs and then winces. There’s a deep ache in his side. He fingers the area carefully and lets out his breath in a pained hiss. At least one broken rib, then. Maybe two.

“I want to take you to the hospital,” the boy says.

Will shakes his head. “My friends are inside. If I up and disappear, they’ll worry.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

The boy nods, like Will’s made a fair point. “All right. I’ll leave you, then. Just… stay out of trouble, okay? No more picking fights with kidnappers.”

“I tried to look for you.”

It’s out of his mouth before he can help it, and he immediately regrets it, because he can feel his face heating up and the other boy looks away, down at the ground.

“I know,” he says, in the same flat, careful voice as always. “I looked for you, too.”

Will clenches his aching fists and musters the last of his courage. “My name’s Will Solace. Can you tell me yours?”

The boy looks a little sad as he shakes his head no.

 

The war against Gaea and her minions is long and bloody and destructive. There is no secrecy anymore, not for the demigods, who are on the front page of every newspaper, who occupy the prime-time slot on all news networks. For the first time, Will sees Shadow Boy (as he’s taken to thinking of him) in a photograph of a press conference held by the League of Heroes. He’s in the back, looking uncomfortable and hyperalert. If Will wasn’t looking, he doesn’t think he would’ve noticed him at all.

They meet for the fourth time at the height of the war. Not even Will’s sleepy college town remains untouched by the Earth Mother’s wrath; one night, an earthquake shakes its way through the city, the kind of earthquake that tugs at buildings and splits roads in two and renders the landscape unrecognizable.

Will wakes to a sound like the world ending.

He dresses silently and quickly, his heart in his throat. He doesn’t know what, exactly, he’s looking for, what’s giving him the sick feeling in his stomach. He just follows his feet, crouches under doorways during the two brief aftershocks, and picks his way through the rubble.

He finds Shadow Boy on the side of the road, dressed in the same skintight suit he wore the last time they met. He’s helping a tall, handsome blond boy with a lightning bold insignia across his chest lift a chunk of what used to be the supermarket off a woman’s leg.

When the woman is free, the blond boy picks her up and lifts off, into the sky, flying in what Will knows is the direction of the hospital. Shadow Boy collapses onto the curb, holding his side and grimacing.

Will approaches cautiously, carefully, like he’s interacting with a wild animal. “Hi,” he says, though this seems woefully inadequate.

Shadow Boy looks up at him with a mixture of alarm and resignation.

“I’d hoped you would’ve left,” he says. “Anyone ever told you you’re kind of an idiot?”

“You have. On multiple occasions. Let me see your side.”

“I’m fine,” Shadow Boy grumbles, but Will sits down next to him and pulls his hand away from his abdomen. It comes away dripping crimson.

“I know we don’t travel in the same circles, but I wouldn’t really define ‘gaping hole in the stomach’ as ‘fine.’”

“I’ve had worse,” Shadow Boy says, shortly, and Will believes him.

“Well, I haven’t. But I’ve _seen_ worse, because I interned at a damn emergency room, so keep putting pressure on it and stand up. I’m going to help you.”

His eyes widen and he opens his mouth to protest, but Will’s already slinging his arm over his shoulder and hoisting him to his feet.

He makes a soft moaning sound that Will hates himself for finding attractive.

“My apartment is, like, a block away. Can you walk, or should I give you a piggyback?”

Shadow Boy looks like he would rather be bleeding out on the street than receiving a piggyback ride, so Will laughs humorlessly and they move forward, slowly and cautiously, over the mountains of debris.

The stairs up to Will’s apartment are a little tricky to maneuver, but they manage it. Will steers them to the couch and drops Shadow Boy without ceremony. Shadow Boy groans again and lays down flat on his back. The black jumpsuit makes him look impossibly long and lean, the darkness of the color making his hair and skin look darker, too.

He flops an arm over his face and Will turns to rummage under the sink for the First-Aid kit.

“Take your shirt off,” he commands without looking back. “I’m gonna need to clean that cut.”

“I don’t think you understand how these suits work,” Shadow Boy grumbles. “There’s no shirt. It’s kinda sorta all or nothing. So unless you want me naked on your couch…”

Will hits his head on the cabinetry and comes up blushing furiously.

He finds an old pair of boxers to give the boy on his couch and leaves him to change. When he returns, Shadow Boy’s lying on his back again, shirtless, stretched out gloriously, his bare skin the color of warm wood under the dim lighting. The shadow-tattoos still lace their way up his arms, giving way to a latticework of scars across his chest and stomach.

He’s lean and well-muscled and Will wants to lick a stripe up his abdomen, wants to press a kiss to every inch of scar tissue on his body.

( _Jesus Christ, get your head out of the_ gutter-)

Then he shifts a little, and Will can see the mess of blood on his other side. He crosses the room and sits down next to him, his Doctor Face firmly in place, offering only a, “This might hurt a bit,” before getting started.

It does hurt. Shadow Boy almost takes Will’s head off when he tries to clean the wound, and then again when he tries to stitch it. But when the dirty work is done, he gives a soft, heavy sigh of relief and flops back onto the cushions. It’s not long before his breathing evens out, the rise of his chest less ragged and more steady.

Will gets up to wash his hands. He’s just about convinced Shadow Boy’s asleep, until he hears him whisper, “Nico di Angelo.”

“What?” Will asks, his voice too high, off-kilter.

“My name. Nico di Angelo.”

Will Solace stares at Nico di Angelo, and it feels, absurdly, like coming home.

“Nice to meet you,” Will says, quietly.

Nico chuckles. “Back at you, Solace.”

Will sleeps on the floor that night. When he wakes up the next morning, Nico is gone.

 

They meet again a month and a half later, on a day much like the one on which they met. The war with Gaea is over, the demigods fading back into obscurity, though they still turn up on the news from time to time.

Will is working on his thesis, applying for a semester abroad, trying to remember what life was like in the days before he couldn’t go twenty-four hours without Nico di Angelo’s name on his tongue.

He comes home from work one afternoon to find a boy with a messy undercut, a leather jacket, and glasses on his doorstep. He’s watching the rain fall, until Will drops his book bag on the ground with a heavy thump. Then, he’s watching Will.

“Nico,” Will says.

“Solace,” Nico responds, in the same controlled, even tone as always.

“I sort of thought you might be dead.”

“I sort of thought I might be dead, too.” Nico shoots him a lopsided smile. Will thinks he looks taller than he used to. “But some idiot scraped my ass off the pavement and saved me.”

“Sounds like quite the catch.”

“He’s something,” Nico agrees.

“Why are you here?” Will asks. It’s not an attack, not a confrontation. He just honestly wants to know.

“I forgot to give you something, the last time I was here.”

Will blinks. “What?”

“This.”

Nico closes the space between them gracefully - everything he does is graceful, Will would argue, especially this - and reaches up to cup Will’s face in his hands. He guides their mouths together, and when their lips meet, he tastes like mint and moonlight and a little like blood.

Will is too surprised to react for a second. Then he relaxes, knots his hands in Nico’s hair, tilts his head so that their mouths slide together, lips parting Nico’s with a quiet sigh. Nico’s tongue traces Will’s lower lip and then the inside of Will’s mouth, his hands moving to trace down Will’s chest, closing in the fabric of his t-shirt.

When they part, Will keeps his forehead against Nico’s, presses a kiss to the shorter boy’s eyelid.

“Are you going to leave again?” he asks.

Nico grins. “Would you like me to?”

Will frowns thoughtfully, rubs his chin like he’s considering the question. Nico laughs and draws their faces back together.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I was thinking about Nico in a supersuit and things escalated. This just goes to show you that thirst really can make you productive.


End file.
